The Hour of Power with Al Sharpton

Rev. Al Sharpton is the founder and President of the National Action Network (NAN), a not-for-profit civil rights organization headquartered in Harlem, New York, with over 47 Chapters nationwide. As one of the nation’s most-renowned civil rights leaders, Rev. Sharpton has been praised by President Barack Obama as “the voice of the voiceless and a champion for the downtrodden,” and by former President George W. Bush who said that “Al cares just as much as I care about making sure every child learns to read, write, add and subtract.”

Rev. Sharpton is currently the only African-American host of an evening talk show called “PoliticsNation” on MSNBC that analyzes the top political and social news of the day featuring the country’s leading newsmakers. He also hosts a nationally syndicated radio show “Keepin it Real” that is heard daily all over the country, and two local New York radio shows.

In April of 2001, Coretta Scott King hailed him as “a voice for the oppressed, a leader who has protested injustice with a passionate and unrelenting commitment to nonviolent action in the spirit and tradition of Martin Luther King Jr.”

Born on October 3, 1954 in Brooklyn, New York, Al Sharpton began his ministry at the tender age of four, preaching his first sermon at Washington Temple Church of God & Christ in Brooklyn. Just five years later, the Washington Temple church’s legendary Bishop F.D. Washington licensed Al Sharpton, his protégé, to be a Pentecostal minister.